Recent Articles

MOFGA and the Organic Farming Revolution

This week's We Are What We Eat column by Todd Chretien reviews the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association's The Organic Farming Revolution: Past, Present, Future...

Amazon Warehouse Workers Get Second Shot at Unionization

This is a follow-up article to one printed on November 8, 2021 about allegations made against Amazon regarding unfair intimidation and ballot solicitation aimed at their...

The Most Direct Route: Why I Quit My Public Sector Job

This is Part Three of an ongoing series focused on the increasing phenomena of burnout in the work place. Please read to the end to find out how you can connect with the...

Burnout at Preble Street

This is part of a series, “The Great American Burnout,” that focuses on interviews with Mainers who experienced burnout during the pandemic. Sam Spadafore sat down with...

City Council Approves Massive Pay Cut to Frontline Workers

The following is a statement written by the Maine Democratic Socialists of America. Pine & Roses Editorial Collective recognizes the truth in this statement, and is...

Portlanders rally for COVID hazard pay

On January 3, Portland’s City Council will vote on whether or not to repeal the state of emergency that was enacted on August 2, 2021. Without a state of emergency in...

Op-Ed: Portland Must Keep Hazard Pay

Tonight, the Portland City Council will vote on whether to strip Portland workers of the hazard pay we started earning on January 1, 2022. This is the same hazard pay that...

Farming for a Better World

Global climate change is tightening its grip on Maine. It’s set to be 40 degrees or more and pouring rain on Wednesday, January 5, from Kittery to Farmington. I don’t know...

Portland Faces Critical COVID Decisions

As both the Delta and Omicron variants of COVID-19 wash over Maine, the Portland City Council will soon debate whether to extend the city’s State of Emergency (SoE). This...

Maine Socialists Offer COVID Vaccine Clinic

On Monday, December 27, the Maine Democratic Socialists of America (MDSA) sponsored a pop-up COVID vaccine and booster clinic in Portland. As with all COVID vaccine clinics...

The Great American Burnout

This is Part One of an ongoing series focused on the increasing phenomena of burnout in the work place. Please read to the end to find out how you can connect with the...

Is Capitalism Doomed? Discussing Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution

“The secret of Marx’s [theories] is found in the transitory character of capitalist economy, the inevitability of its collapse...” Rosa Luxemburg In the two years that I...

IATSE Workers Locked Out of Merrill Auditorium

On Thursday night outside of Merrill Auditorium, audience members lining up for Chelsea Handler’s show were met with picketers spanning the street. Instead of being in the...

Milk With Dignity Comes to Maine

On Monday afternoon, November 8, shoppers at the Back Cove Portland Hannaford looked on as a crowd of more than 200 people gathered across the lot. Busses rolled in and a...

Amazon’s Role in the Disenfranchisement of Southern Black Voters

In the deep South, an election took place, fraught with every slick tactic imaginable to keep African Americans from voting. Poll boxes were closely surveilled....

Option A for Smaller Shelters Aligns Portland with Housing First, Best Practices

On Election Day, November 2, Portland voters will have the opportunity to vote for Option A on Question A to intervene in the City’s underhanded deal with developers to...

Maine DSA discusses Rosa Luxemburg with scholar Helen Scott

“Socialism is not a question of parliamentary elections, but a question of power.” These were among the last words that socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote before...

Portland’s District Two Candidate is Community and Conversation Driven

Sam Spadafore, Pine & Roses reporter and District 2 voter, spoke with City Council candidate Victoria Pelletier about policing, the housing crisis, and community-driven...

We talk about divisiveness because we can’t talk about apartheid

Local politics in Portland typically follows a well-worn path. The city is run by Democrats, there are some ongoing debates, a certain amount of mudslinging, and generally...

Why Welfare is Such a Convoluted System

Why is welfare such a convoluted system in Maine? Well, there’s a fitting convoluted answer: The welfare programs themselves have been designed to be difficult and...

Mayor Snyder’s Electioneering Email Violates City Policy

For at least the last ten months, subscribers to Portland Mayor Kate Snyder’s monthly email newsletter have been receiving City news and updates on a variety of issues of...

French Canadians in Maine: They called them “frogs”

Andy O'Brien is the communications director for the Maine AFL-CIO, a statewide federation of 160 local unions representing 40,000 workers. He writes on live and labor in...

Abortions Are Not Just for Women

On September 1, 2021, Texas legislature passed S.B. 8, or better known as the “Fetal Heartbeat Bill.” Cries from abortion rights women activists were heard across the...

Artist Denies Cop Collaboration on Parkside Mural

“Have you seen this?” a DSA comrade messaged me. “It’s a police badge!" Linked were two news stories about a mural at 82 Gilman Street in Portland, Maine that depicted two...

Interview with Rep. Seth Berry, Pt. II

This is part three of a series by The Maine Mural podcast about the ongoing effort to establish a consumer-owned electric utility in the state of Maine. You can hear the...

St. Vincent plays Portland: abuse, poverty, and 70’s glam

St. Vincent kicked off her “Daddy’s Home” tour in Portland, at Thompson’s Point on Friday, September 3. The show, coming on the heels of recent performances by...

On This Labor Day, Remember

It’s Labor Day yet again, and while many of us will spend it grilling, visiting family, or meeting up with friends, many of us aren’t familiar with the hard and arduous road...

Maine Mural Interviews Rep. Seth Berry

Maine Mural host Dylan C. sits down with State Rep. Seth Berry to discuss legislation that would have allowed Mainers to vote whether they want a statewide consumer-owned...

Crash Course pt. IV: Socialism & Internationalism

This is the fourth and final installment of Maine DSA's Crash Course series. This series focused on introducing different topics related to socialism. One aim of this...

Portland Charter Commission Gains Control Over $75K Budget

A scheduled meeting between City Manager Jon Jennings and several Charter Commissioners was cancelled after budget questions the Commission sought to have answered were...

Crash Course pt. III: Socialism & Oppression

The Maine chapter of Democratic Socialists of America has put together an introductory crash course series on socialism and how it interacts with various topics. This is a...

Tahmoor Khan speaks about racist attack in Bangor

On Friday night, August 20, two individuals committed a hate crime against Tahmoor Khan and his family, spray painting racist graffiti on his car and destroying the family...

Review: Opera Maine returns with a sparkling Elixir

Sharky is a Maineiac from Portland rambling about all things art, and music of every stripe, including rock, progressive, jazz, symphonic, Lieder... and food, too. He writes...

We can no longer ignore the fascist movement festering in Maine communities

Andy O’Brien is communications director at Maine AFL-CIO. He has written extensively about far-right extremism in Maine for The Free Press and Mainer News Cooperative. This...

Advocating for minor leaguers’ work

The following was originally published by Marc Normandin on June 30th, 2021 via his Patreon Newsletter. It is reprinted here with permission from the author. Sea Dogs fans,...

Portland Charter Commissioners seek budget clarity from City Manager

On Monday, August 11, the Portland Charter Commission met remotely to define the roles of Officers, adopt Community Agreements, and establish sub-committees responsible for...

As Delta variant surges, anti-vaccine protesters march

Howa Mohamed shared this video and commentary with Pine and Roses' readers after witnessing an August 14 march in Portland, Maine protesting Gov. Janet Mills's Covid-19...

Maine DSA presents: Socialism 101 Crash Course

Maine Democratic Socialists of America presents: Socialism 101 Crash Course. This video is part of a series designed to introduce new DSA members and anyone who's curious to...

Black artist’s work set ablaze in Portland

At the beginning of August, an art installation in Congress Square in Portland called New Rhythms was set on fire. The artist, Jordan Carey, got the call as he was about to...

DSA Convention 2021: big accomplishments and the long road ahead

The Democratic Socialists of America has grown to 95,000 members in 2021, up from less than 10,000 in 2016. It is now the most important socialist organization in the United...

Tenants Unions: how to form them, how to use them, and how they’ve won

The CARES Act eviction moratorium has expired, but the CDC has issued an extension for counties where there are high transmission rates of COVID-19 under pressure from...

Maine allocates $20 million for green housing construction

The commodification of housing under capitalism means that affordable housing developers often view affordability and sustainability as mutually exclusive goals. To cut...